Based on the premise that the true Home of the Groove, at least on the North American landmass, is the irreplaceable musical and cultural nexus, New Orleans, Louisiana and environs, this audioblog features rare, hard to find, often forgotten, vintage New Orleans-related R&B and funk records with commentary. Some general knowledge of N.O. music is helpful here, but not required to get your groove on.

About Me

I currently host a weekly show, "Funkify Your Life", on KRVS 88.7 FM in Lafayette which includes music covered on HOTG and more. You can listen-in live Thursdays at 1:00 PM or to the rebroadcast Fridays at 9:00 PM, or stream shows on demand and see playlists at the station website under the Programs tab. I am a former resident of Memphis, TN, where I did a weekly radio show called "New Orleans: Under the Influence" from 1988 to 2004 on WEVL 89.9 FM. I've been collecting and researching this kind of music (& others) even longer.

HOTG Heads Up

Individual audio files are accessible for a limited time after posting. Link to access audio will be on the song title. No link? Audio's outa here*.

When you hit a song link, a player streams it in a separate window. For other listening options, right click on the player when it comes up.

Note: Audio files on this blog are not high resolution (usually 128k) and are posted for reference purposes only. Please do not link directly to them. Use caution if booty shaking while operating vehicles or heavy machinery. Whenever possible, please buy music by these artists!!!
*HEADS UP: If the audio is no longer available here, hit the affiliated site, HOTG Internet Radio, a fully licensed webcast streaming a huge playlist of songs from the HOTG Archives. So go on, get down with the get down.
EMAIL: hotgblog (AT) gmail (DOT) com
ARTISTS & LABELS (or reps thereof): Want to submit your New Orleans/Louisiana grooves for review or posting consideration,
or want an audio post discontinued? Email me.
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section is now moderated. Legitimate comments will be posted after review. Thanks for your understanding...and patience. NOTE:
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QUOTES OF NOTE:
"New Orleans is of such key importance to American music because historical factors combined to make it the strongest center of
African musical practice in the United States, and, cliches aside, that practice really did travel up the Mississippi and did
spread overland." - Ned Sublette, from Cuba And Its Music

"I heard a group called Huey Smith & the Clowns, out of New Orleans. Now this is where funk was really created! That's where funk originated....
I couldn't understand how to do it, so this drummer from Huey Smith's band [Hungry Williams] showed me how to play [it]." - Clayton Fillyau,
drummer for Etta James and James Brown, on the origins of the 'James Brown Beat', in The Great Drummers Of R&B, Funk & Soul, interviewed by Jim Payne.

"A lot of those New Orleans drummers would come through, and I got a lot of stuff from those guys....Tenoo [Coleman] was...as funky as any of them.....
I learned some of that funk by listening to Tenoo." - John 'Jabo'Starks, drummer for Bobby Bland and James Brown, to Jim Payne as above.

"At the risk of sounding egotistical, a lot of the broken up stuff that these guys are playing now stems from the stuff that I had started doing." -
Earl Palmer, on his early days drumming with Dave Bartholomew's band, to Jim Payne, as above.

"With funk, it's almost more what you don't play than what you do play. I like those long silences between riffs,
I like the empty spaces. Those empty spaces, when you stop and let the groove wash all over you, make the
difference between fake funk and real funk." -Art Neville in The Brothers Neville

"Thank the good Lord for the funk musicians." -Jon Cleary ("Pin Your Spin")

"Without New Orleans, there would be no America." -Keith Frazier, Rebirth Brass Band, 2005.

"....don't be fooled. This city is deeply wounded. I'd say it's like an amputee
with phantom memory." -David Freedman, WWOZ, post-Katrina.

"If there was no New Orleans, America would just be a bunch of free people dying of boredom."
-Judy Deck, in an e-mail to Chris Rose at the Times-Picayune

"I'm not finished!" - Wardell Quezergue's final comment of the night after accepting the 2008 Best of the Beat
Lifetime Achievement In Music Award from Offbeat

"I discovered New Orleans along the way, and that made a big difference - It loosened me up." - Richie Hayward, the late drummer for Little Feat.

October 13, 2005

Where Africa Meets Oompah (Replay)

If you’re just getting here, or just haven’t been paying attention (and who could blame you), I am featuring some replays of tunes I posted last October when HOTG was new and I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, and most of you didn’t either. I have resived my comments somewhat from the earlier post in hope that they may make more sense.

My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now was the first LP for theDirty Dozen Brass Band, and was re-issused on CD around 1990. They are both out of print now; and more's the pity. I bought this very well-recorded LP a few years after it’s 1984 release on Concord Jazz. I never heard the CD or even saw a copy. As the LP was pretty hard to find, many people regard the DDBB's Rounder album/CD, Live: Mardi Gras in Montreux, from 1986 as their first; and it is one of their best, with full-tilt in-concert performances. But, as much as I love that record (it was my introduction the band), and their subsequent fine CDs, this Concord LP is special, because it was their first and is an absolutely great-sounding, insistently grooving example of the band fairly early in their career (they formed, more or less, around 1977). "Do It Fluid" (a title with new meaning, post-Katrina) shows what these young guys could do with their intense, accomplished musicianship and super-charged delivery. Note the consummate sousaphone/tuba work ofKirk Joseph(who is no longer with the group) on this track for a workshop in propulsive bass pumpin'; and marvel at the rhythmic interplay of the horns, all churning and burning along like pistons in some reved up monster engine, while the percussion itself is stripped down to just cowbell, snare rim, and cymbal syncopation until some snare head beats sneak back in around the three minute mark. So hip.

The Dirty Dozen helped revitalize the brass band tradition in New Orleans, which was dying out for lack of new blood and material. They threw out the rule book, got busy, and led way for all the other young bands to come with their adventurous repertoire, compositional skills, enormous energy, and monumental fonk.

Over the years the Dozen have changed from a "pure" brass band (brass and percussion), adding keyboards, guitar and, occasionally, trap drums to the killer horns;and they still have undeniable groove power. But I prefer the simpler instrumentation. At this year’s Jazzfest, I saw them do a great set in more or less their original configuration; and that confirmed it.

When African-Americans were introduced to brass marching band instruments in 19th centrury New Orleans, they did something remarkable with them over time, engendering no less than a new musical form, jazz, where, as Baby Dodds said, “every man in the band has his own rhythm to keep”, and improvisation is the norm. That's an extreme over-simplification of the process, for sure; but there's no way to neatly sum up the confluence of influences that became New Orleans music. My bias is for the visceral, syncopated, funk-infused second line grooves which arose in the streets of that humid, atmospheric, sub-sea level city through the marching, parading, and general struttin' of brass bands, Mardi Gras Indian gangs, and associated revelers. The repercussions linger to this day. Both jazz and funk were born in those streets, went separate ways at times and came back to intertwine again and again. To my mind, the music of the Home of the Groove is at its finest when those streams merge. Look no farther than the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the whole modern Crescent City brass band movement for the free-flowing evidence.

Thanks to the Reaper for sending along this link to the srream of a live DDBB set, if you want to get a taste of 'em live the night before Katrina came to town.

3 Comments:

Ahhh, conceptual continuity. With New Orleans music on the brain yet again, I headed over to the Internet Archive and started streaming an excellent set from the Dirty Dozen. (the show was recorded the night before Katrina hit, so there are a couple of jokes about the upcoming storm that don't seem quite so funny now, but don't let that stop you from DLing the show). Imagine my surprise when I wandered over to HOTG and found that Dan had posted a Dirty Dozen track just a couple of hours before.

Could it just be a coincidence? Maybe. Is it further proof that HOTG is the place to be when you're jonesing for the real deal? Hell yeah.

Dan, I am sure you know this, but I feel I must give props where them props is due: Do It, Fluid was written by jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd and first recorded by six of his students in the jazz dept at Howard U. They called themselves -- you know where I'm going with this -- The Blackbyrds.

If you didn't know that, then you need to check out their eponymous 1974 debut. Do It, Fluid is the first track and it absolutely kills. It's sicker than the avian flu.

Thanks for the live DDBB link, Reaper. I'll put it in the post. I guess great minds do dog paddle in the same stream of consciousness, or whatever that old saying is.

And Mr. Nice Guy, I did know of the Blackbyrds original. I always wondered why they received no credit on either DDBB album the tune is on; but I forgot to mention it last year - and doubly forgot this year! I've got some Blackbyrds, but not that debut album. It's on the list now. Thanks.